


the electric synthesized pop ballad of why keith can’t have nice things

by kay_cricketed



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Gen, M/M, and keith panics because emotions, emotion are hard, only it's a super tame a/b/o verse, serious discussions about peanut butter and laser cats, the team teaches keith how to family, wherein lance takes great pleasure in ripping apart keith's reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-22 20:09:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7452358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_cricketed/pseuds/kay_cricketed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Keith can't have nice things.  That's it.  That's the story.</p><p>(Or, in which Keith slowly learns that sometimes the best family is the one you make, Pidge has strong feelings about peanuts, Lance has a secret but would've spoken up sooner if he'd known it would break Keith's brain, Hunk is the actual best, and Shiro is just relieved he didn't have to give anyone the Talk.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the electric synthesized pop ballad of why keith can’t have nice things

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Электро-синти-поп баллада о том, почему Киту не светит ничего хорошего](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7757338) by [timmy_failure](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timmy_failure/pseuds/timmy_failure)



> This is my first ever use of A/B/O 'verse; however, it's pretty tame compared to most. No real consent issues to speak of except Keith's biological urge to give Lance nice things (which he doesn't have to do if he's thinking about it, but does, because _emotions_ ), and Lance's biological urge to shoot things in the face (pretty much normal for him).

**i. (regarding the ballad)**

 

“It’s exactly one minute and four seconds long,” Lance says, “so about as long as it takes you to open your mouth and prove me right.”

“What,” says Keith.

“And it’s all crazy laser music and a hyperactive violin,” Lance adds proudly, slashing his hands through the air in a way that he probably thinks resembles laser fire. “With some kind of forlorn cat yowling in the background.”

“Huh,” says Pidge, “I can see it. Er, hear it.”

“My theme song does not have a synthesizer,” Keith says. “Or a cat.”

“It totally has a synthesizer,” Hunk tells him, not without sympathy.

“Nobody has a theme song,” says Keith, even though that exact protest hadn’t helped him the first time he tried it. “That’s stupid. This is a stupid conversation.”

Shiro puts down his computer pad long enough to comment that he’s not sure he knows enough about contemporary music on Earth to lend anything to the discussion, which marks him as a traitor in Keith’s book. And to think, Keith rescued him from the Garrison all those months ago. In hindsight, he should’ve let Shiro stew in their clutches for a few more hours.

“Protest all you like. I think we can all agree that _ruiners of everything good_ have synthesizers in their theme song,” says Lance. “Ergo...”

“You know,” Pidge offers conversationally, like it’s not grinding the saltiness right in Keith’s face, “I could probably build a synthesizer. I could probably program _Rover_ with a synthesizer.”

“So then it could follow Keith around,” says Lance, catching on, “and play his sad angry-bees ballad whenever he breaks something else—”

“There are no bees!”

“Is it bees or lasers?” Hunk asks them, looking lost. And this is why Hunk is secretly Keith’s favorite of the paladins, because the question unintentionally launches the group into a different discussion regarding which is more dangerous ( _lasers, duh_ , says Pidge).

Of course, it’s another four days before Lance gets bored with sing-songing _nya-nyow nyow_ in his direction. It’s another week before Keith stops eyeing Rover with a healthy degree of caution. It’s upwards of a month before Keith gets over the very simple idea that somehow, as a result of five telepathic lion robots and the end of the universe, he’s found a small contingency of people who don’t mind that he’s a screw up, and who might actually like him _because_ of it.

Even Lance.

And Keith knows that for a fact, because Lance has more reason to hate Keith than anyone else on the ship does. But when they come back from a near loss in battle and Keith is only held together by twining, furious knots of muscle and mass, Lance is always the first to touch him—fearless, without thought—to slug him in the shoulder and laugh at his unraveling. For Lance, that’s as good as admitting the rest.

 

**ii. (regarding the definition of nice things)**

 

His first clue should have been the day after the bombing in the castle.

Sunrise doesn’t pierce into the ship in the same way that it would on Earth, pooling in generous patches across Keith’s makeshift mattress, which he had propped up in front of the window on the same tinder blocks as his coffee table. He could wake up slow and easy back home. Let the warmth gather in his belly. Here, it doesn’t matter what planet the ship is taking refuge on—whether the skies are tumultuous or pleasantly calm, there are no windows to let in or keep out the light. Keith wakes up to the same white ceiling and the quiet hum of the ship’s life support systems every morning.

It’s like being back in the barracks, only he doesn’t have to share a bunk. But without the sun, Keith opens his eyes before daybreak and feels restless. Sometimes he gets up and goes to the training room, beats down his restlessness until it gives soft and wet beneath him. Sometimes he walks until he finds a window, and then he watches the sky shrug that week’s constellations away.

The day after the bombing—early on, before they understand what’s at stake and how long this whole messy saving the universe thing will take—Keith gets out of bed with a different goal in mind. 

No one else is at the cryopods yet, so Keith takes his time. He wipes the condensation from the surface away. Cloaked in numbing blue, Lance is still in a healing sleep. His face looks weird when it’s unanimated. Ice has crystalized in the short tufts of his hair.

“Idiot,” says Keith.

He watches him breathe, and is mostly glad about it. _Good team_ , Lance had called them. Keith isn’t so sure. But he’s glad about the _still breathing_ thing. Isn’t that a start?

They’re not alone for long. Pidge wanders in, dark baggy eyes looking them over and followed by Rover wobbling in an uneven line in the air. Hunk isn’t far behind. “Up already?” Pidge asks with a jaw-cracking yawn.

“Just making sure he didn’t get himself into any new trouble,” says Keith.

“Fair enough. If anyone could wreck something in a coma, it’s Lance.”

Hunk is still bleary-eyed, rubbing the crust from his eyelashes. “You two don’t know the half of it,” he says. “I think he might be on a few black lists at the Garrison.”

“I _know_ he’s on black lists at the Garrison,” says Pidge.

“How’s that?”

“I read his file.”

“What?” Hunk gapes, attention caught. “How’d you do that? No, more importantly, did you read mine?”

The ship is starting to light up around them, the hum growing louder, embedding itself in Keith’s bones and tendons and teeth. He sighs, already impatient. When he swipes the surface of the cryopod again, it makes an alarming beeping noise; small pinpricks of light spread out across the display and illuminate the pod.

“Um, you probably shouldn’t do that,” Pidge says, sneaking up beneath Keith’s arm, glasses awash in blue. “Let’s see…”

“This is why we can’t have nice things,” Hunk says sadly.

Keith looks at him.

This is the moment he misses the clue. This is the moment he thinks Hunk is talking about the cryopod. Even later, when Hunk pushes the bowl heaped with food into Lance’s hands, when everyone gathers around Lance and watches intently as he pokes at the goo, Keith doesn’t think it’s strange. This must be what family is like.

He does notice that Lance’s hair is still damp where the ice has melted away. The moron must run warm, to have thawed out so quickly.

 

**iii. (regarding family)**

 

Like this, almost six months pass. Between the training and liberation of planets, Keith comes to know his newfound friends. He even likes them, most of the time. He doesn’t have to admit to liking them, which is probably for the best all around, but he does.

He learns how to hide his stuff from Pidge, whose clever fingers get into everything that’s private so that it can be redeveloped, rewired, and reprogrammed to be better. Pidge’s rambling blends into one giant blur about the preferred egg-laying habits of the blue-ringed carpet spider, how sweaty the paladin suit gets (hint: very), and whether the ship is a giant computer or a giant brain or magic or some insane combination thereof. Sometimes the talking is even kind of nice, like having a radio on in the background.

He learns that Hunk is generous. Not just generous with his culinary skills—although Hunk’s dinners scrounged from whatever the planets have to offer are Keith’s main reason for soldiering on—but with his time, his kindness, and his humor. It costs nothing to laugh with Hunk. There’s no threat, and Keith can let his shoulders relax a little when it’s just the big guy and him. Sometimes it’s hard on Hunk, because he cares so much—more than Keith can imagine caring about _anything_ , really—but Keith learns, too, how to be supportive when it matters.

Shiro is having a rough time. Keith doesn’t know what to do about that.

(But he’s getting better. He smiles more often, and comes out of his room to sit with them, even when they’re just talking to fill the empty space around them. He tells Keith, “The best way to get over old memories is to make new ones. You know what that’s like, don’t you?” Keith doesn’t know what to do about that, either.)

As for Lance, well, that’s easy. Lance is the most ridiculous, obnoxious, pointless waste of space Keith has ever met. He’s also fiercely loyal, clever, and the kind of crazy that meshes well with Keith’s own. Keith’s never met someone who pisses him off the way Lance does—or someone who pays as close attention to him as Lance does.

Keith sometimes thinks, _Maybe it’s an alpha thing. Maybe we can’t get along because we’re busting our heads against each other._

But he’s not sure. Keith doesn’t really have a lot of experience with that stuff. What he knows about his own designation consists of the dry-cut diagrams biologists print in thrift store textbooks, and the way something burns beneath his skin when he thinks about anyone trying to take his family away from him, now that he’s found one at last.

 

**iv. (regarding the dangers of eavesdropping)**

 

“I have something _really_ important to ask you, Princess…”

At the sound of Lance wheedling, Keith slows down in his march through the ship before he turns the next corner. He’s coming back from a grueling training session, grubby and panting for breath, unfastening his gloves and yanking them off with his teeth. The corridors are mostly empty, as usual. Sometimes Keith thinks it’s more than a little creepy how tomb-like the whole place is, even as the new paladins try to breathe life back into the nooks and crannies. Some rooms always feel bereft.

Allura gusts out a sigh. “Lance, we’ve talked about this. I don’t want to go out on a date.”

“I promise that’s not the question!”

Their voices echo up into the metallic cradle of the hull, and Keith can see them in profile around the corner. They haven’t noticed his presence. Keith hesitates, wary of intruding. The last thing he wants is to incur Allura’s wrath, and Lance being a moron and teasing her about their nonexistent courtship is one surefire way of getting caught in the crossfire.

Lance leans in and whispers in her ear. The suspicion on Allura’s face falls away in an instant, replaced with surprise.

“Oh,” she says, “I didn’t realize—”

“I kind of like it that way,” Lance says, apologetic. He claps his hands together and gives her a big stupid grin, the kind that gets on Keith’s nerves without fail. “But you wouldn’t be able to help a guy out, would you?”

“I’m so sorry, Lance,” Allura says, and seems to mean it. “I’m afraid Alteans have long evolved past the kind of biological triggers you’re talking about. Given time, we might be able to come up with some kind of replacement, but…”

“But not anytime soon,” says Lance, disappointed. His shoulders sag; his mouth twists unhappily. “Okay. My bad. I probably should’ve said something earlier.”

Allura touches his arm in sympathy. “Well,” she hedges, “it’s not too much of a problem, is it?”

“ _Ugh_ ,” says Lance.

Keith slips away, going the long route around that takes him back past the training room. He wants to demand an answer as to what’s going on, and what does Lance need, and is it condoms—it sounds like condoms—but if it’s condoms, he’s going to need to punch Lance for worrying him, and also for asking a space ship to manufacture protection for the sex he isn’t even having or able to have. Because that would be an awkward conversation, Keith retreats. Also, he’s perspiring and tired.

(Much later, in hindsight, Keith is a lot of things. Like an idiot.)

 

**v. (regarding lying liars who lie)**

 

“I’ve got a really awful case of the flu! Puke everywhere, man.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” says Shiro, looking concerned. “Can we bring you anything?”

“Nope,” says Lance, wiggling his fingers at the entire table, “but thanks. Just give me some space so I don’t contaminate you all with the ooga-booga, okay?”

“Copy that,” Pidge says.

Hunk wags his spoon. “Stay hydrated.”

“You don’t look sick,” Keith says, suspicious.

He doesn’t. Lance looks fine—better than fine. His face is flushed pink up to his ears, but he’s obviously fresh from the shower and full of energy and _not sick_.

Lance eyes him with the disgust of a toddler examining a mealworm: sort of delighted at the gross factor, sort of affronted that the universe is allowing things to continue on this way. “I would argue with you, but looking at your face is making me want to vomit again,” he says. “I’m gonna turn in. See you guys on the flip side.”

The paladins wave at him half-heartedly, although Shiro’s smile is kind and irritates Keith. Can’t they see he’s faking it? He’s obviously faking it.

“Didn’t figure you’d give up on our training to _save the world_ that easily,” he says, stabbing his breakfast of goo.

Lance scowls at him. “Whatever. My intestinal tract is throwing more shade than you, dude.”

Keith bristles. “Well, some of us—”

“Ugh,” says Lance, “not doing this! Not doing this. _Enjoy practice_ , mullet for brains. Someone put him on mental exercises.”

He stomps out, and Keith isn’t hungry anymore. 

Shiro puts a hand over his arm. “Keith,” he says, low and gentle-like. “This really isn’t the place to talk about it.”

“Whatever,” says Keith, yanking his elbow away. He stands up and feels the pressure closing in on him from both sides, ballooning red and swollen, even though there’s no reason to be this worked up over such a little thing. Who cares about Lance? Who cares about any of it? “I’ll be in the training room.”

No one says anything when he leaves. When he passes the door to Lance’s room, it’s shut and he can’t hear the sound of anyone beyond.

 

**vi. (regarding why Lance has every right to think the worst about Keith)**

 

He’s still angry by the end of the day—practice is useless without Lance, imbalanced and impractical—and even when there’s a minor skirmish in the atmosphere, the lions assemble without him. “We don’t need to drag Lance out for these little guys,” Shiro tells them. “C’mon, suit up.”

Keith takes out six of the eight combatants. _Screw_ Lance.

The next morning, Lance doesn’t come to breakfast or training. Shiro and the others act like they don’t seem to care, but Keith cares. Keith cares a lot.

He storms out of training after accidentally knocking Shiro into the training robot—feels twisted up inside over it, but not sorry—and enough is enough. He’s doing his best to try and become a better pilot, a better fighter, a better teammate, and what is Lance doing? Lance is messing around. Lance lies to their faces, and asks Allura for stupid things, and doesn’t seem to care about protecting the worlds that are under Galra rule.

(And what if he really is sick? That’s worse. The hole in Keith’s stomach becomes larger, black and yawning, when he thinks about Lance in the cryopod, the way his face had been wan and smudged in soot after the bombing. _We make a good team_ , he’d said. It haunts Keith. They are not a good team. They are a work in progress, at best.)

Either way, he has to know. 

At Lance’s door, Keith knocks. He waits for a long minute, listening to the lack of noise in the room beyond, and knocks again.

There’s no answer, and now fear is fissuring, overtaking the fury and digging in like a bruise. Keith rattles the door handle, but it’s locked. “Hey,” he says, a little loud. “Open up. It’s me.”

He strains, but still can’t hear anything.

It takes barely a minute to pick the lock. So much for Altean security.

Lance’s room is set up with the exact same furnishings and stark interior as Keith’s, but he’s obviously tried to give it a little personality, the lived-in feeling Keith hasn’t managed to recreate even in his own house back on Earth. The room is also empty—without the double barrier, he can hear Lance’s humming in the adjoining bathroom, the spit of toothpaste and running water—and Keith takes in things that are easy, that catch his attention. There’s a sleeping mask and headphones piled on the bedside table, and a ratty picture of a lot of people crammed into a photo booth tacked to the wall. The people in the photograph all have Lance’s sun-sewn skin and sly smile. Weapons have been taken apart and strewn across some kind of work table. There are blue slippers half-kicked beneath the bed. Some kind of smell in the air—something sweet, almost medicinal—settles heavy in Keith’s lungs.

Lance gargles. Keith relocks the door and takes a determined step forward. He’s waiting for him, arms crossed, when Lance comes out of the bathroom.

“Hhgh,” Lance says, stretching his arms over his head. It lifts his sleep shirt, revealing a little strip of stomach and the sharp knobs of his hips.

The back of Keith’s neck is sweaty and hot. Weird.

When Lance spots him, it gets even weirder. He stiffens and gets that pissed off expression—the one Keith’s expecting—but he also takes two steps back and acts like he’s trying to hide behind the bathroom door. “What the cheese,” he says.

“You’re not sick,” Keith accuses, pointing at him.

Lance stares. “Wow. You broke into my room to tell me that?”

“You have everyone worried, but you’re just trying to get out of training!”

Lance is still holding onto the bathroom door. He’s also still staring like _Keith_ is maybe everything that’s wrong with the universe. “I guess I should be glad you’re being yourself and not thinking things through,” he says, “but mostly I’m annoyed. Keith, _get out_.”

“Sure. Tell me you’re going to be in training tomorrow.”

“Uh, no.”

“Then I’m not going anywhere.” And maybe he should’ve expected it, but he didn’t, and it’s getting to Keith. Because Lance complains a lot, but he never shirks his responsibilities. He knows what’s at stake and he wants to get home more than—well, more than any of them, Keith thinks.

Lance looks to the left and then the right, like he’s searching the room for any other surprises. “Uh, okay,” he says, as if to himself. “Hm. Okay?”

“If you don’t come to training tomorrow, I’ll drag you in myself.”

“Yeah, no,” says Lance. “That’s a pretty _big_ no. No can do. Nope. I’ve got a sort of—virus. A week-long, isolation-required virus. If you catch my drift.”

That scent is driving Keith’s brain crazy. He’s trying to breathe shallowly, but it’s getting into his head, distracting him. What is it? Some kind of alien plant? Because it’s nice, sure, but it’s also more than a little overpowering the longer he stays here.

“Uh, _are_ you catching my drift?” Lance asks, making a face.

Keith looks at him.

“Wow, no, you aren’t. It’s going right over your stupid mullet, isn’t it? Great. Okay.” Lance finally lets go of the door and approaches, his earlier caution dried up. His scowl is dark, thundering. “You know, I’m starting to question whether you were raised by wolves. Dumb, flea-bitten wolves with shaggy fur. It would explain so much.”

“Whatever,” Keith snaps; he feels all on edge, riveted to the floor. He feels like he can’t stay still. “You can call me out all you want. At least I’m not the kid playing hooky while the rest of the team does everything they can to get ready!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Some of us—what are you doing?”

Lance is close. Too close. “Taking pity,” he says, exasperated. His hand shoots out and then he’s got a handful of Keith’s hair and—

Keith is dragged full in, and it’s not because he meant to let it happen. But his knees go all rubbery and he just—falls. His face buries in the slope between Lance’s neck and his shoulder, nose and mouth to flesh stretched thin over bone and overly warm.

“There you go,” says Lance, clasping the back of his skull. “See?”

He does. Oh, he does.

His brain has short-circuited.

What the _quiznak_?

Keith shudders, breathing in deeply without meaning to. The scent is finally discernable: a kind of saccharine sweat and the copper of blood, the cloying pull of a heat. He’s only smelled that once in his life, and only because some student at the Garrison forgot to take her suppressants and she was unlucky enough that her heat started flaring up in mid-class. But even that wasn’t like this, wasn’t laced with the familiar, wasn’t Lance’s toothpaste and aloe lotion and the lingering burn of laser fire beneath.

Without meaning to, he sucks in another lungful. Rubs his cheek against Lance’s ear.

“Okay, none of that,” says Lance, sounding startled. He pushes Keith away and it’s—gutting. Disorienting.

Keith puts his hand to his face and blinks, slowly, until the room refocuses.

“You’re in heat,” he says, and is jarred by his own hoarse words.

Lance grimaces. “Ding ding—now he gets it! Mine don’t last too long, but I’m all out of suppressants and it’s probably a good idea if I just hang back until it’s over. You get me? So no more of that stuff,” and he jabs Keith in the chest, but Keith barely feels it, “about playing hooky, man. You know me better than that.”

“You’re an omega,” says Keith, stupidly.

“I’m a lot of things,” Lance agrees. “Funny, smart, handsome—also an omega.”

“ _How_ ,” Keith says, helpless, and of course he knows _how_ , but it’s like all his intelligence pooled out somewhere at his feet. “You’re loud! You’re loud and you flirt. You’re bad at it. You’re.”

“Excuse you,” says Lance. 

“How is this possible?” mutters Keith, gripping his head. 

“Glad I could shatter your reality,” Lance tells him, entirely too cheerful. “But on that note, I would like to lock my door and get back to my usual early-on heat routine. Here’s a hint: it doesn’t involve you. C’mon, out. Out, out, out.” He pushes Keith toward the door, and it’s a little too much, too close. 

Keith flounders for something to say, and then a few synapses catch fire against each other. “But how will you eat?” he demands, panicking.

“Probably with my mouth,” Lance says. Right as he shuts the door in Keith’s face.

The lock clacks, and it’s just Keith in the hallway. Again.

He stares at the door.

This is the moment Keith realizes he has an erection. 

“ _No_ ,” he says, and yanks his shirt as far down over his jeans as it will stretch. Not that it helps. Even when the problem’s covered, Keith knows it’s there.

 

**vii. (regarding second sex designations)**

 

Later, over a bowl of green goo that doesn’t look remotely appetizing, Shiro stares at Keith in the same way Lance had: complete befuddlement.

“Yeah, I knew,” he says. “Didn’t you?”

Keith grips his spoon. The metal warps slightly in his fist. “No.”

“That’s weird,” says Pidge, “considering you’re the only alpha here. Shouldn’t you have known before any of us?”

“Yeah, that’s weird,” Hunk says, swallowing a mouthful of the gelatinous meal.

“I’m not the only alpha,” Keith grumbles. “There’s Shiro, too.”

“Uh,” says Pidge.

Shiro lifts an appeasing hand and grins. “Beta,” he says in amusement.

“Beta,” agrees Hunk, pointing between himself and Pidge.

“Ugh,” Keith says.

Shiro shifts his bowl aside, giving Keith his full attention. “It doesn’t change anything about Lance, or about any of us, Keith. There’s no point in using anyone’s designation to judge their character. We just need to give Lance a little time while he’s getting over his heat, and the team will be back to normal before you know it.” He frowns, watching Keith fill another bowl with goo while his own is untouched. “What are you doing?”

“Provisions.”

“What?”

“He’s such an idiot,” Keith says darkly. “He probably didn’t bring anything to eat and he’s going to be in there an entire _week_.”

Silence. It’s pronounced enough that Keith looks up from his task. “What?”

Pidge’s eye is twitchy. Hunk is gaping at him. But it’s Shiro’s face that puzzles Keith the most, because it looks like he’s choking and trying to close off his expression at the same time. 

“That’s very considerate of you, Keith,” he strangles.

Keith narrows his eyes at them. “It is,” he says curtly, and continues filling the bowl. Heats probably make omegas hungrier than usual, right? Besides, Lance will eat anything that’s shoved at him, even if his skinniness would imply otherwise.

“I feel like I should be filming this,” says Pidge.

 

**viii. (regarding what happened to that one nice pillow)**

 

Keith feels stretched to the point of breaking as the days pass and there’s no sign of life from behind Lance’s bedroom door. Allura reassures him that Lance is alive and well—the biosensors are picking up his readings—and Shiro says these things take time. But that doesn’t make every morning any less of a private hell. He checks Lance’s door before breakfast, upset at the untouched dishes scattered in front of it like tribute: bowls of jello, a few cups of now-cold root tea, some raw herbs Hunk collected from the planet surface.

And even though it troubles Keith, whenever he tries to bang on the door, something stops him from following through. He rubs his face and walks away instead.

It’s not until day six, when Keith finds a really nice pillow in the linen storage—big and fluffy and soft to touch—and tries to fit it beneath Lance’s door that he realizes something’s not right. He’s trying to give Lance a pillow. That’s—not normal.

Keith takes the pillow with him and is glad. He has something to hug when he sits down to talk to Shiro about his sudden mental instability.

“Oh boy,” says Shiro. “Please tell me someone’s given you the Talk.”

“Of course they have,” Keith snaps. “But none of that explains this!”

Shiro looks at him. He softens. “Keith, it was bound to happen sooner or later. You’ve never lived in close proximity with an omega before, but as an alpha, you were always going to be affected. It’s in your instincts to try and provide for him.”

“My instincts,” repeats Keith.

“We’re all so close now. We’re like a family.” Shiro smiles, and it makes the scar across his nose widen and darken in color. “When I was a kid, my mom used to bring my dad cookies and magazines and all kinds of things. Anything that’d make him comfortable for his heat. She’d even rearrange furniture for him. He had her move the sofa from the living room and wedge it between their bed and the wall once, and she was happy to do it. As a beta, I didn’t have as many of those urges, but I knew they were completely normal.”

“Because we’re family,” says Keith; he doesn’t mean to sound so desperate.

“Well, that or—unless you have _intentions_ , which is also completely normal.”

“No intentions! None.”

Shiro sighs in relief. “Probably for the best. With all of us stuck here alone, and working together as a team, that’d probably complicate things.”

Keith is putting furrows in the very nice pillow. He’s probably ruining it for Lance. Except he’s not, because he’s not going to give it to Lance. He’s going to keep the pillow and he’ll put as many furrows in it as he wants.

“Besides,” he forces himself to say, “Lance likes girls.”

Shiro shrugs and scratches the back of his head. “I think Lance likes just about anyone who’s attractive and seemingly single. It’s going to be an interesting couple of years, watching him flirt with every alien in the universe.”

There’s an ugly ripping noise. Keith looks down and he’s torn the pillowcase at the seam, spilling pink alien feathers into his lap.

“Oh,” says Shiro.

 

**ix. (regarding untimely realizations)**

 

It’s not until day eight that Lance makes an appearance. He’s stepping out just as Keith is stepping back, having refreshed the root tea and left it at the threshold.

“Hey,” says Lance, waving. He’s freshly showered, and looks refreshed and well-rested and—

Keith’s brain saves itself the torment by derailing. 

Lance nudges one of the dishes aside with the tip of his sneaker. The corner of his mouth quirks up. “For me?”

“You can’t be trusted to remember how to survive,” says Keith.

“You’re adorable,” Lance deadpans. But he looks at the tea still steaming at his feet and something changes in his face. He crouches down and picks it up, and he’s smiling. “Huh. I like this stuff.”

He takes a sip and it does terrible things to Keith’s stomach and chest.

“Thanks,” Lance says, and passes Keith without another glance. Their shoulders brush in the narrow hallway, a simple drag of fabric against fabric, but it sends Keith into a tailspin. He suddenly realizes he’s been ready for the crash for a week now. The truth has been there, bald and ugly, but he’d been ignoring it. 

The truth is, Lance is family. But Keith is pretty sure he shouldn’t want to ram his brother against a door and rub his face over him until they smell the same. He shouldn’t want to lick the flavor of the tea out of his mouth. He shouldn’t want to _have_ Lance, but he does, and _of course_ the first thing Keith’s done now that he has something like a family is sink his teeth in and rip it apart.

It does not feel nice to be a ruiner of everything good. Today, Keith can hear the lasers and the cats and the bees rise in shrieking crescendo, and he hates that Lance was right.

 

**x. (regarding self-control)**

 

The first step to regaining control of the situation: ignore there is a situation and also do not let the laser-cats consume your life.

Keith is reasonably assured this is a halfway decent plan; it has had a sixty percent rate of success in the past. So, although he spends the first day of the plan sulking in his room, he ventures out into the dining hall on the second. Up until Lance saunters in, it’s going as well as can be expected (number of inquiries about his well-being: three, in varying degrees of skepticism).

“What, no maid service today?” Lance asks, scratching his hair until it sticks up on end. His hair is aggravating. His hoodie is aggravating. All of it, aggravating.

“Shut up,” says Keith.

“The romance is gone,” Lance tells the table sadly. He fills up a bowl of goo, walks over to the table, and offers the lion’s share to Hunk. They work in perfect tandem that often makes Keith jealous: with a twirl of his spoon, Hunk lightens the load; with a satisfied grunt, Lance steals his untouched tea and inhales the steam.

“The honeymoon never lasts,” says Hunk. He fistbumps the hand that Lance is using to hold the cup, knuckle to knuckle with care.

“What can I say? I tried, buddy, I really tried. I put myself out there, you know?”

“Ugh,” Pidge says. “Too early. Pick on Keith later.”

“Let’s not pick on Keith at all,” says Shiro, diplomatic and also, in Keith’s opinion, an asshole. He hadn’t left Earth an asshole, so Keith blames the aliens.

Keith is aware, however, that he probably ought to say something. Probably an apology, to Lance. For the—lock picking thing. And the—accusations thing.

He tries to meet Lance’s eyes, but it’s difficult. Lance squints back at him and says, “Yeah, sometimes it’s too easy.”

(“C’mon,” he says later, knocking into Keith’s shoulder. “You’ll feel better after you’ve shot some things.” He’s right about that, too.) 

 

**xi. (answers)**

 

Keith has always considered his designation to be an insignificant, arbitrary component of his identity. There had been no question in the foster system—his short temper and impressive instincts were indicative, his handlers said, of an alpha, requiring no test—his had been an easy checkmark in the file, a washing of hands and a relieved, _He’ll be fine on his own._ Somehow, Keith had taken that at face value. He learned but never became invested in the unit covered in his biology classes, and instead spent his hours dreaming of the stars, alone in the quiet canvas of space. He felt, even then, more affinity with the distant fire of giants than his age group.

_You should know about bonding,_ his handlers had said. _You may meet your match one day, and then you’ll need to know what to do._

But Keith had never intended to initiative a bonding. His childhood had been isolated, solitary—a carefully contained refuge. What Keith had wanted, and still wants, are answers. His identity is not made of designations and ticked boxes. He is more than his daydreams. He has a name, but no idea who has given it to him.

Somehow, Keith knows the answers he seeks cannot be found in any public records or birth certificates. He is fixed on a signal, coded into his blood, that sings and sends him to the sandy mountains, to carvings in rock, to the spiraling universe.

 

 **xii. (instincts)**

 

He manages to cover the ratty, tangled mess of his emotions pretty well, and to Keith’s knowledge no one is the wiser that he’s got a _thing_ for Lance, or at least, his body seems to think so. Keith wishes his body had better taste.

(In truth, maybe it’s been going on for longer than Lance’s heat. In truth, maybe Keith has been watching him too closely for months, blaming his focus on how much room and attention Lance demands with his antics.)

In training, Keith ignores the problem. He’s very good at that. He ignores the way he can almost hear Lance’s pulse in his throat, a strong pump of blood that jumps at loud noises. He ignores the way he’s always aware of Lance’s position on the floor, and that if his eyes were closed he’d still be able to point the idiot out. Most importantly, Keith ignores his frustration when Lance doesn’t learn from his mistakes, or when he brays out a laugh, or when the training session ends and Lance slings an arm around Pidge and Keith feels like a hollow shell instead of the battle-ready pilot he’s become.

Stupid. He’s being stupid.

Despite that, Keith is relieved that he no longer feels the pressing urge to take care of Lance. To prove himself, he volunteers to lead Lance through the invisible maze a few weeks after the incident (his _heat_ , ugh), and takes more pleasure than honorable in directing Lance to walk into the electric fields.

“Okay!” Lance explodes after the eighth time, ripping off his helmet. His hair sticks up in all directions. “You’re doing this on purpose, jerk!”

“False,” says Keith, in the bland way that always gets Lance riled up.

“ _Again_ ,” Lance says, “and don’t be a dick about it.”

Keith restrains himself, silent but smug. He leads Lance through the maze without sending him into a single wall. Sometimes the precision is almost uncanny, like they’re tethered together and communicating on wire, but Keith is confident that the effect is based on their training and not Keith’s inappropriate physiological impulses.

Afterward, Lance takes off his helmet again and meets Keith up in the control room to switch places. He has a strange expression on his face, assessing, almost shrewd. He looks at Keith and straight through him.

“What?” Keith asks.

“You’re treating me the same as always,” Lance says, and narrows his eyes.

“Why would I treat you any differently?” He frowns, hoping he’s not been caught out. There is no reason, though, for Lance’s suspicions. Nothing has changed between them.

“That,” says Lance, “is a good answer. Huh.”

They stare at each other, and it’s awkward but Keith thinks that maybe it’s a good kind of awkward. His experience of the differing levels of awkwardness is pretty low, though.

Lance eventually laughs, although it’s bemused. “For once, your social ineptitude and caveman upbringing is working in my favor,” he says, making no sense whatsoever. “Up, mullet head. It’s your turn to fry.” 

Whatever. Keith gets through the maze without a single shock.

 

**xiii. (pidge has feelings about peanuts; care about peanuts for pidge)**

 

Time passes, and things are okay. That is all that can be said about it.

“I have _feelings_ ,” says Pidge, “about peanuts.”

“Good feelings or mixed feelings?” asks Lance. “Like, would you marry a peanut, or are we talking vengeful samurai warrior on a quest to end peanuts?”

“You are so weird,” observes Pidge, squinting at him.

“I have a lot of feelings about food,” Hunk says, looking up from the piece of junk that Pidge had thrown him to keep him occupied and away from Rover while it was being repaired. “I think that’s normal. It’s our fuel, you know? Our bodies are set up to work with it and around it all day long.”

Keith is fixing his bayard; it had cracked in the last battle. Superficial, but upsetting. He doesn’t look up from the delicate work, but says, “It doesn’t matter either way, does it? I haven’t seen a peanut since Earth.”

“Exactly,” says Pidge. “I have a peanut butter itch that needs scratching, and apparently the rest of the galaxy hasn’t heard of it yet. It’s a travesty.”

“My mom makes an awesome turtle sundae,” Lance says, sighing. He gets like that when he talks about home: heavy, low. There’s no reason for him to be hanging out in Pidge’s little workshop area, but he’s there, anyway.

Pidge frowns, nose wrinkling. “No can do. That has peanuts on it.”

Keith looks up. “You just said you missed peanut butter.”

“Peanuts are not _peanut butter_.”

“They pretty much are,” says Lance. “Like, mashed and ground up peanuts.”

“And butter?” Keith offers, a little worried at the thought.

Pidge sniffs and digs a screwdriver into Rover hard, making it beep. “I didn’t say it made sense!”

“I like pickles but not pickle relish,” Hunk says.

“It’s the _same thing_ ,” Lance grumbles, his indignation not proportionate to the crime.

Keith is smiling. He doesn’t realize he’s smiling at first, but then his jaw starts to ache and he’s glad he’s looking back down at the bayard and not at Lance. That could be awkward. Keith is starting to make ground on understanding the varying scales of awkward that someone can experience when it comes to Lance.

“You don’t get to talk with any authority,” Pidge says, “because you like that gross watered down leaf-mush Coran brews.”

“If I close my eyes, it’s like coffee without the coffee part,” says Lance. He blinks up at Keith. “Where are you going?”

Keith freezes, in the middle of standing. He blanks out. “Uh…”

“All this talk is making _me_ hungry, too,” says Hunk, dropping the junk he’d been fiddling with. He stands and nudges Keith gently. “You up for the green goo or the other green goo?”

Keith looks at him and shrugs. Internally, he would like to throw Hunk a grandstand parade and adorn him with flowers for the save.

“Ugh,” says Lance.

 

**xiv. (hunk is the actual best leg)**

 

“Don’t worry,” says Hunk, as they travel the long lonely corridors of the ship together, footsteps in time. “I’m feeling it, too, a little. It means his next heat is pretty close.”

Keith stares at the shadows ahead of them, refusing to look at his face. “What?”

“Well, I figured you were going to get him a cup of tea. Maybe I was wrong.”

“You were wrong.”

“If you _were_ ,” Hunk says, in a deliberately light tone, “it’d be understandable. I grew up in a house full of omegas, you know? Even though I’m not an alpha, I sort of tuned into the cycles and wanted to help out my sisters in any way I could. When you’re close to one, it comes with the territory. If he asks you to stop, you stop. But Lance had a few heats before he went on suppressants in the Garrison, and he never seemed to mind when I brought him stuff. He got a kick out of it, I think.”

Keith doesn’t realize he’s slowed to a stop until Hunk goes “oh” and comes back to get him. 

His chest hurts, like a phantom laceration that’s taken the heat out of his blood and left him cold. He wants, fiercely, to return to the hanger and Pidge’s workshop. He wants to tuck his cheek in next to Lance’s and breathe deeply. The idea that this is inescapable, _normal_ , makes him afraid.

“Oh jeez,” says Hunk. “It’s like that.”

“It’s not like anything,” Keith mutters, rubbing his forehead.

“I, uh, don’t have much good advice about that,” Hunk admits. “But—I’m here for you, you know? If you ever want to talk. Or anything.”

Keith doesn’t want to talk. But they stand there in the dark together, Hunk’s hand a brand on his shoulder, until something in Keith steadies. “You’re a good friend,” he says, and the surprised beam that Hunk gives him is reward enough for his efforts.

 

**xv. (shiro is a responsible space dad)**

 

The replacement suppressants have been low on the priority list when faced with defending the universe, and the first experimental batch had given Lance a red rash of hives, so Lance spends his next heat holed up in the bedroom again. “Remember me as I was,” he announces at breakfast that day, “not as I am before you.”

“You’re offending my nose,” Pidge says, grimacing. “Please, please go away.”

“Excuse you,” says Lance.

Keith manages to stop himself from shoving his food bowl into Lance’s hands by gripping the table and thinking about blowing things up with his lion. 

“Lance,” says Shiro, beckoning. He puts his hand on Lance’s arm and they speak quietly, heads dipped together for a while. Keith is careful not to listen. They seem to come to an understanding, because Lance salutes Shiro and cocks a grin at the table.

“I’ve actually been told my aim gets better when I’m on a heat,” he says cheerfully.

“I’m hoping we’ll never find out,” says Shiro, amused. “Go on. Let us know if you need anything?”

“Ice cream,” says Lance. “Gallons of rocky road. Actual hot dogs. Burgers.”

After he’s gone, Shiro turns to the table and clears his throat. “I asked Lance if he was willing to be on call during his heats.”

Keith looks at him. _Are you insane_ , he doesn’t say. It’s probably all over his face, anyway.

“Makes sense,” Hunk says. “Sooner or later, we won’t be so lucky with the timing. If we need to assemble Voltron…”

“He agreed.” Shiro sips his tea, the same tea that Lance likes. Keith often wonders if that’s why Lance drinks it, because he’s tried the tea and it tastes like sad old socks. “Let’s try to hold out as long as we can, though. I don’t want to think about the stress it might put on his body. Who knows if we can sync enough to assemble?”

“Should we practice?” Pidge asks, doubtfully.

Keith stands, chair scraping back. “Bad idea,” he says, and offers nothing else. The others murmur their consent, though, as he scrapes the rest of his breakfast down the sink drain and pretends he’s not miserable. Seven more days, give or take. He can do this.

 

**xvi. (he cannot do this)**

 

On the fourth night, Keith can’t sleep. He gets up and walks out to the helm, gazing at the constellations unfamiliar but comforting in the night sky. This planet is covered in a low-lying milky fog that curls around the hull of the ship. The helm is dark, the crystal glowing soft and violet. He touches the control panel and imagines taking flight.

“You have the worst timing,” Lance says, somewhere behind him.

Keith exhales, muscles held rigid. He half-turns his head, and can see a shadow moving against the far wall where Lance has curled up—the blue slippers catch what little light is left to them. “You should be in bed.”

Lance doesn’t answer for a long time. Keith starts to worry that he’s dreaming; the entire moment is surreal, like it might dissipate into smoke if he looks too closely.

“I miss my mom,” says Lance, finally. He takes a shaky, watery breath that reverberates around them.

Keith doesn’t dare move. “I’m sorry,” he says, and means it.

“I miss _everyone_ ,” he says, “and being somewhere that smelled like me, and that felt safe. I handled the transition to the Garrison bunks okay, so I didn’t think it would bother me as much as it does. But nothing feels right. I can’t get comfortable.”

He shifts, and now the scent catches the air and drops on Keith like an anvil, the same as before but layered with salt that Keith can almost _taste_. His cheeks are blotchy and his sleep clothes are patched and damp. “Hey, it’s impolite to look,” Lance grumbles, pulling his knees up to his chest.

Keith yanks his head around and swallows. “Sorry.”

“S’fine.”

“Can we—do something?”

“I’m open to ideas,” says Lance, and he sounds the kind of tired that dries out bones.

“Okay,” says Keith, but he has no ideas whatsoever.

They stay for a long time, watching the turn of the atmosphere as it hides away the stars. Lance groans and shifts in place, but his distress eases as the minutes pass in tandem, and he seems to be in some kind of trance, fixed on the change of light. Eventually, he says, “It should make me feel small, all of that bigness. We’re so far from home. But it’s beautiful.”

“Yeah.”

(The nice pillow has been sewn up and worn in and furrowed during its time in Keith’s bed. But he still leaves it propped against Lance’s door, and when he feels like an idiot and comes back to collect it, the pillow is gone. They don’t talk about it, or about home, again.)

 

**xvii. (keith gets a clue)**

 

Months pass, and Keith is disoriented by how little actually changes. Or maybe the change is so gradual that he doesn’t realize it’s happening. All he knows is that he had been alone on Earth, always searching, feeling distinctly separate and apart from the rest of the human race—as if the world were made of mirrors, but Keith was never able to find a reflection. But as they move from planet to planet, Keith forgets his isolation. His itch to find answers settles and becomes quiet. They see exotic, impossible things. They free entire civilizations. They mourn for others. They learn the distinctive differences in how each species’ heartbeats sound against their own.

One day, he looks up and the room is filled with people shouting at each other, and Keith is at home.

Allura and Shiro are bent, heads together, furiously whispering about the next route through the stars—now that the sadness has lifted from Allura’s spine, she stands tall and strong, and Shiro is drawn to her like a moth—they dance around their mutual admiration like children, hands stuffed in pockets, speaking up in unison before silencing. But Keith has seen Allura cup her hand over the back of Shiro’s neck, in comfort, and in warning. His eyes crinkle when he smiles at her.

(“She’s going to eat him alive,” Pidge observes, once. “I think he’s going to like it.”)

Pidge, too, has begun to open up about things—a beloved dog, a grieving mother—and the pictures that were once hidden away are now pinned above the workstation. Sometimes at night, Keith wanders into the hanger bay to where the lights from the computers glow soft and white against the panels, and he plucks the glasses from Pidge’s nose before leaving their youngest to sleep. Pidge has a search, too, and Keith knows something about searching. Sometimes, you have to rest. Sometimes, you have to learn to be okay again.

Judging from the pinch Pidge has on Hunk’s ear, it’s going to be okay.

“Ow,” says Hunk, “be careful! Your fingers are so tiny, _why does it hurt_ —”

“Stop touching my stuff!”

“Technically,” says Lance, reaching out to pinch Pidge’s ear from behind Hunk’s shoulder, where it’s safe, “it’s the alien ship’s stuff!”

“Not after I’ve modified it!”

“That really hurts,” Hunk whimpers. He doesn’t seem to notice that Pidge and Lance have bracketed him on either side, and that he’s never left alone. Keith notices. Keith knows why that is. He’s feeling magnanimous, and Hunk is a good guy, so maybe he’ll even get up and rescue the lug in a second. Someone should.

Lance wraps a stranglehold around Hunk’s neck and karate-chops at Pidge. It’s ineffective, at best.

Keith watches him, and he might be smiling. That’s a change, anyway.

(Later, Lance huffs as he throws himself down next to Keith to watch Coran blow up at Pidge for stealing a very valuable part to the ship’s navigational system. “Like herding cats,” he says. His shoulder is pressed to Keith’s, pointed and casual.

“Laser cats,” says Keith. “Or maybe it was bees.”

“It’s like you talk and all I hear is _shoot me, Lance_.”)

 

**xix. (lance does actually aim better with raging hormones)**

 

They are lucky and make do until suddenly it blows up in their faces. Literally—a Galra monstrosity blisters the ear off of Keith’s robot with its laser beam, and the green lion is sparking in a way that makes Pidge’s voice raise frantically above the radio static.

“We’re not going to make it without Voltron,” Shiro says, grimly.

For a second, Keith doesn’t know what he means. But there are only four lions on the planet front today, and that’s because Lance is still in the final and worst throes of his latest heat. “I can’t even keep up with this thing,” he says, throat closing. “There’s just no way…”

“I know. But we’re stronger together, Keith.”

“Call him in,” says Pidge, tersely. “Lance would be the first to tell you, _call him in_.”

Shiro does. And then they go about their business of desperately trying to stay alive.

The planet is humid and choked with green, a vibrant ecosystem that Galra rule had been unable to suppress. While heartening to see, it makes fighting difficult. Keith tries to keep the battle above the tree canopy, but the Galra monstrosity cloaks itself below and finds them easy targets because of it. “Going in,” he says, shortly, and dives into the leaves.

“Keith!”

_If I kill it now_ , Keith thinks, but it’s a false hope. He sinks the robot’s claws into the monstrosity’s side and rips away a few panels, exposing its vulnerable insides. But the long-armed weapon catches his lion in the side and rockets him across the landscape, until the trees meet him in a jolting impact.

Pain brackets his body. His entire spine moves in a way that’s unnatural.

A loud clamor explodes in his ears. When the agony clears, Keith realizes it’s the sound of his teammates shouting at him in concern and not hydraulics at work. His robot is hanging from a broken, dangling tree branch upside down and that would explain a lot about why his harness is digging into him, holding him in the seat.

“Please tell me it’s not beneath me,” he says.

“It’s beneath you!” Hunk yelps.

Shiro jumps in and gets his lion’s jaws around the monstrosity’s head, but the thrashing sends him flying, too. Keith takes the window of opportunity to curse—in some cases, _quiznak_ isn’t entirely useful—and pull at his controls. “Come on, come on, come on!”

Static fizzles and another signal drops in. “It’s like you miss me,” says Lance. “It’s like you _need a hero_.”

“Regretting this decision already,” Pidge says, but the green lion’s eyes even seem a little brighter.

“I could go back to bed,” Lance says.

Keith leaps out of the tree, something kicking in at last. He takes to the sky again to join the others. “Promises, promises,” he says, and doesn’t mention the strain underlying Lance’s jokes. He sounds _wrecked_.

“Just let me do the leg thing and we can take care of this bad boy,” Lance tells them, dodging a long arc of fire from below. His piloting is even more erratic than usual—he overextends his turn and nearly barrels into Hunk. But Keith notices, because it’s impossible not to, that his return fire finds its mark without fail. The monstrosity screams when the ice digs into its open paneling and spreads wicked tendrils into the wire work.

“That’ll buy us a minute. Everyone get in formation,” Shiro orders.

So much easier than it sounds.

The sync goes as well as usual, but Keith is immediately aware of a drag in their overall weight. Lance’s slowed reflexes and clumsiness hadn’t been apparent from afar, but he’s a good five seconds behind them. As soon as Keith knows it, Shiro seems to, as well.

“Lance, anchor us. We’ll use your weight as our pivot.”

“Got it,” says Lance. He’s panting in their ears, and the echo grates at things inside of Keith. 

The Galra monstrosity crashes up through the foliage and meets Keith’s blade. He presses in angry, forcing the point into the bulbous head. For a moment, he thinks he’s going to break the hull, but then Voltron falters and is pushed back.

The sword slides away with a screech of sparks.

“Sorry,” Lance says, but it’s thin and cutting like wire about to snap. Their footing stabilizes again, holding firm. “I didn’t—sorry.”

Keith brings up the shield in time to block the swath of fire, and he doesn’t know why, but he says, “You got this.”

“I kinda feel like I’m dying.”

“Okay. But you still got this.”

Lance moans, long and unsteady, an _a-ah-ah_ that goes straight down Keith’s body and pools hot and sweet in his belly. It’s not the place or time, but he wants to _swallow_ that noise. “Just—hurry up.”

The Galra monstrosity winds back for another round, but this time Voltron is ready for him. “Brace yourselves!” Shiro shouts, and then Keith feels their focus rail together behind him, a sublime rush that sears out the anger and confusion and pain, and his sword strikes true, and it doesn’t matter what Lance is or what they could be—Keith is not alone. They’re with him.

He’ll figure out the peanut butter thing someday.

 

**xx. (trust)**

 

In the aftermath, Keith disembarks from his lion and waits with the others on the bay floor as they climb out one by one, bruised but safe. They’re all watching the ramp descending from the blue lion, but it takes a long time before Lance finally makes his way.

Lance makes it about two steps out, then stops. He’s holding onto the poles that distend and hold the ramp aloft, but there’s nothing else to hold onto beyond that point. He hasn’t even put on his uniform—his sleep clothes are soaked through, and the fabric is stretched thin as if he’s been pulling on it. He presses the heel of his palm into his face and breathes deeply. His ears are red.

Keith wonders if he could’ve done this, if he’d been the omega. He’s not sure. He’s not even sure he’d be able to walk out like that in front of people.

For that split second, Keith is certain Lance is only taking his sweet time to get to ground level, possibly because he’s embarrassed. But then Lance makes a strangled noise and locks his knees, his hand convulsing on the pole. His face has lost its color, and Keith suddenly _knows_ in his bones that Lance can’t go any further on his own two feet. Their eyes meet across the bay.

“Keith,” he says, like he’s been punched in the gut.

There is something quaking and bright that burns its way through Keith’s body. He doesn’t process the time it takes to get from the bay floor up the ramp—he is there and then he is with Lance, the frantic clatter of boots on aluminum a discordant resonance in his head—and the smell of him is thick, clinging, a miserable knot of sweat and sex and pervading need—works its way into Keith’s lungs and sits there, twinned upset and comfort. It’s as if Lance is just waiting for him, because as soon as Keith cups his elbow, he sags into his side, a puppet with its strings snipped.

“Okay,” says Keith, sounding calmer than he feels. “Okay. Here we go.”

“Here we go,” breathes Lance into his neck, burrowing there. The grime on his skin gets all over Keith’s.

_You will not mess this up_ , Keith tells himself.

“Can we help?” Shiro asks, with a characteristic degree of caution.

Keith shakes his head. They take two steps together, but Lance fumbles both of them, and he’s starting to shake under Keith’s hands.

“Don’t be mad,” he tells Lance, and curls his arms under his back and stupid long legs. Lance shudders when he’s lifted into the air, but he says nothing. There’s something wet against Keith’s wrist and it makes the fire in him lash, hungry and angry. But he must be careful. He must not mess this up. If it rips his cells out of their casings, he must not mess this up.

He carries Lance down the stairs and past the paladins, who are watching them. Keith doesn’t know what’s in their faces—he doesn’t have a word for it.

“Someone get some water,” he says, and doesn’t have a word for his voice either.

By the time they reach Lance’s bedroom, the press of Lance’s body is so hot that it’s stifling and Keith’s pilot uniform is only the barest of protections. He staggers when he steps over the threshold. The room smells even stronger of Lance and his heat—and safer now, Keith thinks, like somewhere learning to become loved.

“Your bed’s gross,” he says.

Lance stirs, hair tickling Keith’s neck. “S’fine,” he says, thickly.

Keith lowers him down to the rumpled sheets and is distantly surprised to see his own ungainliness. He has to pry Lance’s fingers from his neck. The color of Lance’s sleeping clothes against the bed, the color that escapes the half-mast set of his eyelids, it all seems fever-bright, the blue of his lion. His tunic is shucked up high. He only looks at Keith, mouth a soft panting invitation, and somehow it’s enough.

“When the guys bring you some water, you’re going to drink it,” Keith tells him. “Do you need anything else?”

Lance blinks at him, slow, languid. “No,” he says. “Thank you.”

“Okay,” says Keith. “Okay.”

(Keith spends the next three days in his room, and no one asks him to come out. Someone leaves food at the door. He does not jerk off. He wants to. But he doesn’t. He curls up in his own nest of blankets and pillows and squeezes his skull between his hands, and discovers that feeling good about himself is just as agonizing as feeling like a mess. It means something, he knows, that Lance asked for _him_. It means something that Lance does not lock his door for the rest of his heat, and maybe won’t for the one after, or the one after that. It is trust, and it’s—something.)

 

**xxi. (sometimes laser cats aren’t such a bad racket)**

 

“Don’t get a big head,” Lance grumbles when he comes out of hiding. He makes sure to slam into Keith as he passes his kitchen chair, but instead of feeling annoyed, Keith is awash in a deep and abiding well of relief. It feels good to see Lance acting like normal. It feels right to bask in the sting of bone jarred in his socket. Nothing needs to change. Instead, it’s as if something has snapped into place at last, fitting Keith’s uneven edges into a semblance of order.

“I won’t. We make a good team,” he says.

Lance chokes on a mouthful of water and has to sit in his chair, hard.

“Called it,” Pidge says, bored, not looking up from the laptop.

“When you say it, it’s creepy!” Lance sputters.

Keith slides a still steaming cup of root tea across the table in front of Lance.

“ _Creepy_ ,” repeats Lance, and abandons the glass of water to take the tea between his palms. He drinks with his eyelids drifting shut, with his body gone mellow. It makes Keith’s body sing, sort of, smug and happy.

So weird. Okay weird, though.

“Glad you boys have worked things out,” Shiro observes. “We’re sure I don’t need to give you both the Talk, right?”

“No one is giving me the Talk,” Lance says. “No one has _worked things out_.”

“That is totally not what it looks like from here,” says Pidge.

(And today, Keith realizes he can have nice things.)


End file.
